The minimum investment to own a piece of Dubai real estate on Stake is AED 500. That's about $136. It's less than a weekend dinner in the city where the properties are listed.
That's the number Rami Tabbara and his co-founders Manar Mahmassani and Ricardo Brizido built everything around when they launched Stake in 2021. Not a hedge fund. Not a REIT. A mobile-first platform where anyone, anywhere, can buy fractional ownership in actual Dubai properties, starting at an amount most people spend on a week of groceries.
It turns out the demand was real and international. More than two million users from 211 nationalities across 181 countries are now on the platform. The platform's gross merchandise volume has compounded at over 130% annually for three consecutive years. Revenue has followed at over 100% per year. In February 2026, Stake closed a $31 million Series B led by Emirates NBD, oversubscribed, with Mubadala Investment Company, Property Finder, and MEVP taking part, joined by STV NICE, Wa'ed Ventures, GFH Partners, and the property developer Ellington Properties.
The Saudi Arabia numbers are the proof of concept. Stake hasn't just attracted Saudi investors to local properties. It has brought 6,930 international investors into the Saudi real estate market, channeling more than SAR 416 million into the sector through the platform. People outside the country, investing across a border, through a Dubai-built app. That's a different kind of traction.
The next phase is tokenization. Stake is working with co-investor Property Finder on blockchain-based real estate ownership infrastructure that could eventually allow fractional property shares to trade like securities, without the friction of traditional markets. A second product, StakeOne, launched in October 2025, and part of the new funding is earmarked to scale it.
Tabbara's logic is deliberate and simple. Real estate is the world's largest asset class. Most people are locked out of it by price and geography. A technology platform that removes both barriers, under proper regulatory oversight, should scale across borders almost automatically.
In Dubai, the founders who win tend to see limits where others see inevitabilities.
Stake's AED 500 minimum is a category statement disguised as a price point. Tabbara is also one of the most accessible founders I know in this region. The model is portable. The market it serves will not be.